A blog that helps you think like a producer and produce like a thinker.

May 10, 2013

Guest Blog #88 Think about your life

This week's guest blog come courtesy of my first ever guest blogger! Matthew Putman always has a something great to share whenever he guest blogs. In this post he makes some very interesting observations about Pippin both old and new. Enjoy!

Excelsior!

P.S.- It's my Birthday! Help me make it a great one and come to ConnectorCon!

Take it away Matthew!

Over breakfast this morning my 7 year old daughter Juliette
asked me a question which must have been a nagging feeling of confusion for her
for 3 weeks. “What is that makes the old Pippin better than the new one?” While
this may not seem like a profound Meta physical question, it does have both
practical and philosophical resonance for me, as it obviously does for her too.

The story of Pippin
in my life is only as a faint backdrop, but perhaps more importantly as a way
of showing musical theatre’s ability to reflect and contrast life all at once.
This was only part of the Fosse brilliance that defined several decades of
Broadway and film throughout a political, and social climate in New York that
is much different than now. Pippin
was produced during the late Vietnam days, and pre-AIDS crisis days. Pippin was post Broadway’s golden era,
and pre Broadway’s British invasion (Cats,
Phantom et al ). Pippin wasn’t
really about a time (Charlemagnes Europe far enough removed from history in
this case as to be render the musical timeless), but was instead about the
theatre, and how the theatre reflects life. This is at least as Fosse saw it.
Legend has it that Fosse and composer Stephen Schwartz were in bitter
disagreements about what Pippin was
about. Rather than getting into the fundamental philosophies of the two here,
you can look at the bleak and brilliant 1979 film “All That Jazz” to get a
taste for what Fosse thought a show such as Pippin
should be. To see Schwartz’s view, I guess look to all other Schwartz musicals
such as Godspell and Wicked. These views are diametrically
opposed to one another. Fosse saw theater as a showcase for life’s absurdities.
Not completely unlike Samuel Beckett he did not avoid this but embraced the
contradictions that are evident in a medium where tap dancing and death are not
even separated by a cross fade or scene change. They blend. Who else would have
the last scene of a movie about a life on Broadway end with the autobiographical
main character being zipped into a body bag while Ethel Merman belts out the
classic “There’s No Business Like Show Business.”

The problem for Fosse with Pippin (I am speculating) is that the end of the show as written
does not end with Pippin in a body bag, or giving his grand finale as the
Leading Player suggests. It doesn’t even end with ambiguities about compromise,
but instead with a misunderstood interpretation of Voltaire’s “Candide” who
remarks at the end that “we must
cultivate our garden". Both Voltaire and Fosse would cringe at the
end with Pippin’s last sung lines from the book “I wanted worlds to paint, and
costumes to wear. I thought it was there. I think it is here.” The here is referring
to a life with a woman who annoys him, a child that is not his and who treats
him fairly disgracefully, and most importantly a life of mediocrity on a farm.
I do not know what Fosse thought of the value of Pippin’s choice, but we do
have a good indication of what he thought about it as a valid ending to the musical.
In the original musical Fosse had some ambiguity to play with as the lights went
down by having Pippin say, with the child in his arms, that he feels “trapped”
but that "isn't too bad for the end of a musical
comedy." With this flippant and powerful rebuking of the final
message, Fosse turns the tables on the meaning of life from his
perspective. That is whether musicals
are fun, bloody, hard or amazing, when looked at from the outside they look a
lot like life. The have a beginning and end and for a musical you have a
spectacle. “Magic shows and miracles. Mirages to touch.” Fosse himself lived that
life on stages, and that life off of the stage.
The most beautiful song in Pippin is
the ballad “With You”, which in a recording sounds like a simple and pretty
love song. In the show it is an orgy of sexually excess, where Pippin is
experiencing the full potential of nihilism and discovering himself in the
process. Fosse did this often in life, and while not making a moral claim on
decadence, he managed to try in real life much of what Pippin tried for those
two hours on stage.

The climax of Pippin
involves a choice. Pippin has run out of ideas to prove his value. (This may be
very different than Fosse. I think everything he did had value”) and the Leading
Player who has organized the spectacle of his life and the show presents him
with a solution. That is to shine like the glory of the sun. He and the other
players are enticing him to commit a grand suicide of torching himself publicly,
where such an event would be remembered. The Leader Player sings of the sun:
“how she lights the world up, well now it’s your chance.” Pippin rejects going
down in “one perfect flame”, but allows the players who have entertained his
life, and provided him with purpose and hope for meaning to leave the stage,
taking the costumes and lights with them. He then, if it were not for Fosses
off the cuff dismissal of the entire message, goes off to live happily ever
after. Or as in the new version, goes off to live happily ever after, and the
child re-enters singing Pippins theme,
in a pedantic show of generational repetition. Fosse and most of us can see that life is much
more interesting, and much more miserable if we do live in a dangerous way,
with too much pressure to create something unique, too many lovers to be in
love, too many magic shows that come to an end. Still we do these things over
again, because the drive to do them is too great, and regardless, it makes for
a more interesting musical comedy, and for Bob Fosse the two were never
completely untethered.

I took Juliette to one of the first previews of Pippin with great excitement. I had even
been given an opportunity to be one of the many investors in Pippin, which I did not do, as this
would have violated two rules I have for producing, which are: 1. don’t produce
revivals, unless you think they can be done better, and 2. Don’t produce
anything unless you feel it so important to have it done that without you it
won’t be done. I haven’t always followed these rule, and this is one of many
reasons I think I have lost so much money and my soul in the theater that I
often imagine myself in that body bag with Merman singing. Still in this particular
case I almost did get involved because of Juliette. I had shown her many musicals,
and other than West Side Story, Pippin
seemed to stick with her the most. She can dance like a Fosse girl (which my
wife reminds her is not appropriate outside of home) and will call me from
downstairs in the morning to say “Daddy I am wearing Fosse pants today!” Still,
despite her and my love of the show, I did not get involved as a Producer. I
did however go see it with her right away. It is a spectacle that I don’t think
Fosse would have disliked entirely. The choreography was a lot of Fosse,
reimagined through Chet Walker. And for a large part of it I liked it. Then as
it continued I became aware that this was the production that if Fosse were
alive he would have locked Schwartz out to avoid. The decadence was removed,
the fear was removed, some of the true wit was removed, and maybe most
importantly that last disclaimer was removed. It was, after all of this, just
another happy ending that somehow seemed completely false.

When Juliette asked me that question over breakfast, was this
what she meant? It couldn’t be I
thought. And if it was, maybe that was sad. It should not only take a lifetime
to have the cynicism of Fosse, but maybe not even everyone’s life. She is just a
7 year old girl. I said “I know. I think it wasn’t as good either.” She
continued “but why? Maybe the Pippin wasn’t as good.” I thought of how
forthcoming I should be about this to her, but couldn’t be dishonest, so I said
“no, I don’t think it was that sweaty. I think it was the end.” She paused for
a moment, and like a director said “I would have never cast that Katherine.
Pippin would never give up the Finale for her.”
I loved this answer, even though I wasn’t sure she was suggesting that
the actress playing Katherine was so bad that suicide would be a better
solution than living with her. What she was doing though was staritng to see Pippin the way Fosse did. It was a
musical comedy, like life, where the play never ends, until it does.